iPhone app: Dailymotion

Dailymotion, a European competitor to YouTube, has come up with an excellent app that finally brings video content to the iPhone all via the Safari browser (YouTube videos can only be accessed via the onboard YouTube application). The iPhone-friendly portal page looks a lot like the YouTube app, and when a video is selected, a small information page pops up with the video thumbnail on the upper-left corner. There's a tiny Play icon on the thumbnail, and when that's tapped, the video blows up to full size and looks almost exactly like a video from the iPod video player, complete with the same video controls. Why do the videos from this Dailymotion iPhone portal play, when videos from the YouTube Web site can't? Because the YouTube videos require a Flash player, and the Dailymotion iPhone videos are specially Quicktime-encoded to run on the iPhone. Brilliant.

About the author

Nicole Lee is a senior associate editor for CNET, covering cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, and all things mobile. She's also a fan of comic books, video games, and of course, shiny gadgets.
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